Don't get too comfy: The postburn return of severe fire risk under climate change
Abstract
Climate change and human actions, such as fire suppression, have altered fuel characteristics and fire regimes in dryland systems of the western U.S. Wildfire activity has also increased in response to non-native plant invasions and climate-driven shifts in plant cover. As a result, over the last decade, western states have endured some of the largest and most severe fires in recorded history. These shifts are accelerating economic and ecological damage within the ever-growing wildland urban interface, where despite substantial investments in modifying wildland fuels, the number of homes burned has tripled. In the wake of such disasters, residents and resource managers are concerned that future fires could once again devastate their communities and degrade essential forest and water resources. To forecast how quickly the risk of severe wildfire returns in two watersheds in the Inland Northwest, we developed modeling scenarios using a coupled ecohydrologic-fire spread model (RHESSys-Fire). We modeled recovery of fire risk (measured by the probability of spread over time) following severe fire under current and projected future climate scenarios and with and without landcover change. Preliminary results reveal that warming increases the rate of recovery of fire spread in wetter hillslopes, while slowing recovery of fire risk in drier regions. These findings suggest that the effects of climate change on future wildfire activity and potential management strategies need to be evaluated in the context of local environmental conditions.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B53H2498H
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0426 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES